EPA: Enbridge Mich. river cleanup plan due Oct. 20

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has given Enbridge Inc. until Oct. 20 to submit revised plans for additional cleanup work from a July 2010 Michigan pipeline leak that spilled more than 800,000 gallons of gasoline into a Michigan river system.

On Sept. 26, the Calgary, Alberta-based Enbridge said it was increasing its estimate of the cleanup cost by about 20 percent to $700 million.

The EPA issued the order Thursday, saying the cleanup of the submerged oil is expected to last through 2012.

The spill was discovered July 26, 2010 and polluted the Kalamazoo River system in the Marshall area, from Talmadge Creek to Morrow Lake. The pipeline runs from Griffith, Ind., to Sarnia, Ontario.

The new estimate was part of paperwork Enbridge Energy filed today with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company says it’s revising its estimated cleanup costs, from $585 million to $700 million. That's about a 20 percent increase.

“The cleanup cost to date includes some additional work around submerged oil….and those recovery operations….and just some more active remediation of the impacted environment." says Terri Larson, an Enbridge spokeswoman, "So there are a few factors that are at play within that expected increase.”

Dozens of people who turned out for a public hearing in Marshall on the cleanup of last Summer’ s oil spill in the Kalamazoo River left without hearing the news they wanted to hear….that the river will soon reopen.

More than 766 thousand gallons of crude oil have been recovered during the past twelve months. But there are still large deposits of submerged oil in three different parts of the river.